" We did not need this fine eloquence
to assure us of the greatness of our O'Neills and our Tones, our
O'Donnells and our Mitchels, but it so quickens the spirit and warms the
blood to read it, it so touches--by the admiration won from ancient and
modern times--an enduring principle of the human heart--the capacity to
appreciate a great deed and rise over every physical defeat--that we
know in the persistence of the spirit we shall come to a veritable
triumph. Yes; and in such light we turn to read what Ruskin called the
greatest inscription ever written, that which Herodotus tells us was
raised over the Spartans, who fell at Thermopylae, and which Mitchel's
biographer quotes as most fitting to epitomise Mitchel's life:
"Stranger, tell thou the Lacedemonians that we are lying here, having
obeyed their words." And the biographer of Mitchel is right in holding
that he who reads into the significance of these brave lines, reads a
message not of defeat but of victory.
III
Yes; and in paying a fitting tribute to those great men who are our
exemplars, it would be fitting also, in conclusion, to remember
ourselves as the inheritors of a great tradition; and it would well
become us not only to show the splendour of the banner that is handed on
to us, but to show that this banner _we_, too, are worthy to bear. For,
how often it shall be victorious and how high it shall be planted, will
depend on the conception we have of its supreme greatness, the
knowledge that it can be fought for in all times and places, the
conviction that we may, when least we expect, be challenged to deny it;
and that by our bearing we may bring it new credit and glory or drag it
low in repute.
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